Data gathered by vehicles, such as airborne vehicles, may be used by base stations, such as ground stations, for such things as helping generate advisories to other vehicles in the area regarding weather events and the like and determining the health and performance of the vehicle. An example of data being communicated to a ground station from an aircraft includes turbulence reports. These reports may be used to forecast anticipated turbulence for subsequent aircraft traveling in the general area. If communication costs were not an obstacle the atmospheric turbulence reports and other types of reports could be downlinked after every measurement. However, there are communication cost associated with every message sent between an aircraft and a ground station. The communication costs include bandwidth usage/occupation costs as well as communication fees. Hence, there is a downside to transmitting reports after every measurement.
For the reasons stated above and for other reasons stated below which will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon reading and understanding the present specification, there is a need in the art for an efficient method of downlinking gathered data from a vehicle to a base station in a communication cost effective manner.